Marion Hewlett Pike; Portrait Artist

Marion Hewlett Pike, a portrait artist whose subjects ranged from Ronald Reagan to Coco Chanel, has died. She was 84.

Pike, who was named a Times Woman of the Year in 1955, died Wednesday at her Los Angeles home, said her daughter, Jeffie Pike Durham.

A popular socialite and aficionado of the arts, Pike often befriended the celebrities she painted, such as conductor Zubin Mehta, actress Rosalind Russell, ballerina Nadia Nerina and arts patrons Norton Simon and Franklin D. Murphy.

Her portrait of Reagan was on the cover of Time magazine.

“I love people in show business,” she told The Times in 1969 in her Hancock Park studio. “They are creative, exciting.”

Pike came to know Chanel during a period when she lived and painted in Paris six months of every year. The fashion doyenne, then in her 80s, had refused invitations to sit for a portrait by Picasso, but she did sit--once--for her friend Pike. She also let Pike spend seven months in her fashion studio observing her at work.

“The atmosphere was frayed nerves, excitement, enthusiasm, frustration, gloom and energy,” Pike later told The Times. “It was watching the creation of art in its purest sense. The craft comes first, then emotion. Then the agonizing melding of the two.”

Pike wore classic Chanel suits--when she wasn’t in the yellow coolie coat and slacks that were her painting clothes.

Although she spent many months sketching studies of Chanel, Pike was a quick artist at the easel, usually working in acrylics. Nicknamed “Speedball” at Stanford for rocketing around in her red phaeton, Pike kept up the pace in her painting. She could complete a canvas in five hours and once finished eight portraits in 10 days.

She spent about a quarter of each year painting commissioned portraits, “so I can paint what and whom I want the rest of the time,” she often said.

A third-generation Californian, Pike was born on a ranch in Hopland, and grew up in San Francisco, where she made her debut and, ironically, received poor grades in painting classes.

Undaunted, she majored in Oriental art history at Stanford and later studied at the Imperial University of Tokyo and with private teachers.

Pike had her first one-person show in 1955 at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Her work has been honored at the Laguna Festival of Arts.

She donated her portrait of Mehta to the Los Angeles County Music Center shortly after it opened, and her paintings also hang in many private collections; more than 30 are owned by Bob Hope.

In addition to her daughter, Pike’s survivors include a son, John, and two grandchildren.

Her daughter asked that any memorial donations be made to the Licia Albanese Puccini Foundation in New York City.